Snip

Grahams bit his tongue to stop himself from cursing. Another curveball. It was just like the rugby season when he was 16 he told himself, they’d been set to win, their best lock got injured, one of the backs got a concussion and just when they thought they’d have a full team again their Captain had to take time off after his father passed away. It had been a rough season for their team and they had come 5th of the season. They got through it and the following season had placed themselves back in the top three teams. This was the same. Just make the next tackle and keep his focus on winning this game.

“Neuro readings have changed again,” He muttered quietly to himself, “First desynchronising and now, they’re almost over-synchronising with each other.” He had no idea what any of it could mean.

Then the patient woke up and spoke, and it finally dawned that the crew weren’t just synchronising with each other but that there was potentially another entity out there that was somehow connected to this, something else that might be related to these neural changes. Then the cold and chilling thought that maybe they were synchronising to this external force.

He moved over to the patient, “Who?” he asked, “Who knows we’re here?”

Lt. Kahu Grahams, CMO

The question hung in the air for only a moment.

The patient’s eyes remained open, fixed on something none of the medical staff could see. Around Sickbay, monitors began chirping almost simultaneously. Several biobeds registered identical neural fluctuations.

Then another patient stirred. And another and a third officer sat upright abruptly, drawing a startled gasp from a nearby nurse. “They know…” the lieutenant whispered.

Across the ward, a crewman who had been unconscious for nearly six hours spoke at the exact same moment. “…they know…”

The words overlapped perfectly, not repeated. but synchronized.

Doctor Grahams’ display erupted with scrolling data.
Neural patterns that had previously shown individual variation were now converging at an alarming rate. Distinct brainwave signatures were beginning to mirror one another across multiple patients. Not identical—no two minds could become identical—but approaching a level of coherence medical science considered impossible.

Then the environmental systems registered a fluctuation. Temperature: -2.3°C, humidity increased.

For a fraction of a second, several personnel reported hearing distant sounds. Wind. Flowing water. A low harmonic resonance. The sounds vanished as quickly as they appeared.

A nurse looked around uneasily. “Did anyone else hear that?”

Before anyone could answer, every active neurological monitor in Sickbay produced a single sharp tone. The patients froze with all eyes-widening
and their heads turned as if controlled by the same wire. All toward the same wall.

The bulkhead itself showed nothing unusual.

On the consoles there were no life signs, no energy emissions and nothing visible on any sensor. Yet every awakened patient stared at the exact same point.

And then, quietly, as if speaking with one voice through many mouths, they answered Doctor Grahams’ question. “Not who.”

The words emerged from half a dozen patients simultaneously. A pause followed.

Then:

“Where.”

The monitors surged again. For an instant, every neural scan displayed an impossible anomaly. A second pattern that did not originate from any patient. Nor from anywhere aboard the Chernov.

Yet somehow present within every synchronized reading. The unknown signature pulsed once.

Then it vanished.

Leaving only the stunned silence of Sickbay and a collection of frightened medical personnel staring at data that should not have existed.

Somewhere beyond the ship, beyond the derelict, beyond the limits of conventional sensors…

something had become aware of them.

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare